The Cholesterol Content of the Cerebro-spinal Fluid in Certain Mental Diseases

1926 ◽  
Vol 72 (296) ◽  
pp. 62-66 ◽  
Author(s):  
E. G. T. Poynder ◽  
J. Russell

The presence of cholesterol in the cerebro-spinal fluid has been the subject of investigation by various observers. The following communication is based on a series of observations conducted at the Pathological Laboratory of the Maudsley Hospital, on specimens of cerebro-spinal fluid obtained from patients in the mental hospitals of the London County Council.

1925 ◽  
Vol 71 (293) ◽  
pp. 187-192
Author(s):  
W. C. McIntosh

In the department of mental diseases some men have won distinction by their writings, such as Pinel, Esquirol, Guislain and Morel on the Continent, or like Laycock, W. A. F. Browne, Winslow, Maudsley, Bucknill, Skae and Clouston in our own country, but the subject of this obituary gained the respect and esteem of his medical brethren and the public by his unfailing courtesy, his resolute devotion to duty, his kindly disposition toward the officials of mental hospitals and his generous personal interest and sympathy with the patients, whose welfare he ever strove to ameliorate. Moreover these were qualities which found ample scope throughout the length and breadth of Scotland in his long official connection with the General Board of Lunacy as Commissioner and Deputy Commissioner.


1908 ◽  
Vol 54 (227) ◽  
pp. 704-718
Author(s):  
Lady Henry Somerset

I fully appreciate the very great honour which has been done to me this afternoon in asking me to speak of the experience which I have had in nearly twenty years of work amongst those who are suffering from alcoholism. Of courseyou will forgive me if I speak in an altogether unscientific way. I can only say exactly the experiences I have met with, and as I now live, summer and winter, in their midst, I can give you at any rate the result of my personal experience among such people. Thirteen years ago, when we first started the colony which we have for inebriate women at Duxhurst, the Amendment to the present Inebriate Act was not in existence, that is to say, there was no means of dealing with such people other than by sending them to prison. The physical side of drunkenness was then almost entirely overlooked, and the whole question was dealt with more or less as a moral evil. When the Amendment to the Act was passed it was recognised, at any rate, that prison had proved to be a failure for these cases, and this was quite obvious, because such women were consigned for short sentences to prison, and then turnedback on the world, at the end of six weeks or a month, as the case might be, probably at the time when the craving for drink was at its height, and therefore when they had every opportunity for satisfying it outside the prison gate they did so at once. It is nowonder therefore that women were committed again and again, even to hundreds of times. When I first realised this two cases came distinctly and prominently under my notice. One was that of a woman whose name has become almost notorious in England, Miss Jane Cakebread. She had been committed to prison over 300 times. I felt certain when I first saw her in gaol that she was not in the ordinary sense an inebriate; she was an insane woman who became violent after she had given way to inebriety. She spent three months with us, and I do not think that I ever passed a more unpleasant three months in my life, because when she was sober she was as difficult to deal with-although not so violent-aswhen she was drunk. I tried to represent this to the authorities at the time, but I wassupposed to know very little on the subject, and was told that I was very certainly mistaken. I let her go for the reasons, firstly that we could not benefit her, and secondly that I wanted to prove my point. At the end of two days she was again committed to prison, and after being in prison with abstention from alcohol, which had rendered her more dangerous (hear, hear), she kicked one of the officials, and was accordingly committed to a lunatic asylum. Thus the point had been proved that a woman had been kept in prison over 300 times at the public expense during the last twenty years before being committed to a lunatic asylum. The other case, which proved to me the variations there arein the classifications of those who are dubbed “inebriates,” was a woman named Annie Adams, who was sent to me by the authorities at Holloway, and I was told she enjoyed thename of “The Terror of Holloway.” She had been over 200 times in prison, but directly she was sober a more tractable person could not be imagined. She was quite sane, but she was a true inebriate. She had spent her life in drifting in and out of prison, from prison to the street, and from the street to the prison, but when she was under the bestconditions I do not think I ever came across a more amiable woman. About that time the Amendment to the Inebriates Act was passed, and there were provisions made by which such women could be consigned to homes instead of being sent to prison. The London County Council had not then opened homes, and they asked us to take charge of their first cases. They were sent to us haphazard, without classification. There were women who were habitual inebriates, there were those who were imbecile or insane; every conceivable woman was regarded as suitable, and all were sent together. At that time I saw clearly that there would be a great failure (as was afterwards proved) in the reformatory system in this country unless there were means of separating the women who came from the same localities. That point I would like to emphasise to-day. We hear a great deal nowadays about the failure of reformatories, but unless you classify this will continue to be so.


1971 ◽  
Vol 119 (548) ◽  
pp. 47-52 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Freeman

Psychoanalysis is not regarded as having a significant part to play in the treatment of the psychoses. This view has been strengthened by the ease with which the phenothiazine and other drugs may bring many psychotic symptoms under control. Nevertheless, there are psychiatrists who believe that psychoanalysis, in its classical form or suitably modified, can benefit patients suffering from psychoses. The issues which have been raised by these claims are still the subject of controversy among psychiatrists and psychoanalysts. This paper is not concerned with details of the different kinds of analytical treatment which may be recommended for patients. Such an account would be inappropriate in the circumstances of current psychiatric practice in the United Kingdom. Instead attention will be focused on the way in which psychoanalysis can be integrated into therapeutic regimes presently employed in mental hospitals.


1985 ◽  
Vol 146 (4) ◽  
pp. 341-347 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kathleen Jones ◽  
Alison Poletti

SummaryThe “Italian Experience” in closing down mental hospitals has been highly praised by some British observers, who have seen lessons for Britain in the development of community care. However, it has been the subject of heated debate in Italy—and the policy is now to be reversed by law. Two questions arise: why have the claims been exaggerated? And why have they found such ready and uncritical acceptance in Britain?


1932 ◽  
Vol 78 (323) ◽  
pp. 843-866 ◽  
Author(s):  
W. D. Nicol

Shortly after the introduction of therapeutic malaria into this country, the Ministry of Health and the Board of Control, in consultation with the London County Council Mental Hospitals Department, established a special centre for this treatment at Horton Mental Hospital. A separate villa in the hospital grounds was set apart for the work, and, through the interest, advice and help of Col. S. P. James, M.D., F.R.S., of the Ministry of Health, a laboratory was equipped and arrangements were made for the supply of malarial infective material to all parts of Great Britain. The work was begun in April, 1925, and during the seven years that have elapsed since then, 200 cases have been treated. These cases are all women, drawn from the various London County Mental Hospitals; recently, however, an annexe has been added to the centre, and facilities are now available for treating men also.


1920 ◽  
Vol 66 (274) ◽  
pp. 308-309
Author(s):  
F. E. Stokes

The method employed consists of three stages: (1) The conversion of the total nitrogen into ammonia by the Kjeldahl process; (2) the conversion of the ammonia into pure aqueous solution; and (3) the calorimetric estimation of the ammonia in this solution by means of Nessler's solution. The result is expressed as “nitrogen number,” which denotes the number of hundredths of a milligramme in 1 c.c. of cerebro-spinal fluid. In general paralysis there is a high nitrogen number, which is marked towards the termination of the disease. It may be low in the early stages or in remissions. In mania the nitrogen number is always low—a factor of diagnostic importance in distinguishing between this disease and maniacal phases occurring in general paralysis. In imbecility, dementia præcox, paranoia, amentia and epilepsy the nitrogen number varies, but is usually low, and in terminal dementias it is very high. It was also found that density and nitrogen numbers run parallel to one another, with the exception of epilepsy, where high density obtains. The author emphasises the fact that choline does not occur in the cerebro-spinal fluid in mental diseases, and that ammonium salts only occur in the merest traces.


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